Good afternoon, and welcome to the Azerion Interim Financial Results Q2 2024. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. For those of you who are joining us via Zoom, if you'd like to ask a question at this time, please raise your hand by clicking the Raise Hand at the bottom of your Zoom window.
Once called upon, please unmute your audio to ask your question. If you've joined us via phone line, please press star nine to raise your hand and star six to unmute once called upon. For those of you watching on the webcast page, if you'd like to send a question through, please type it in the Ask a Question tab at the right-hand side of the player.
These questions can be sent in at any time during the presentation, and they will be addressed after the live Q&A portion of the event. Thank you. I'd now like to turn the call over to Umut Akpinar for welcome remarks.
Good afternoon, everyone. I am Umut Akpinar, CEO of Azerion. I am here with my colleagues, Mrs. Julie, our newly appointed CFO.
Hello.
Mr. Sebastiaan Moesman
Hello.
our Chief Strategy Officer.
Hello, everyone.
Mr. Ben Davey in his new role as Chief Investment Officer.
Good afternoon, everyone.
We would like to welcome you to today's webinar to present Azerion's Q2 and H1 interim results. Before we start, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge the disclaimer and our forward-looking statements. Thank you. Let's please move on to the presentation. Let me start by saying we are incredibly pleased with how the company is getting better and stronger every quarter.
Q2 has again shown our capability to grow our business, while we are at the same time integrating and consolidating our activities into a single media platform. Our platform advertising revenue reached record Q2 levels, as our premium game segment showed robust growth, resulting in a group revenue of close to 139 million EUR, an increase of 24% compared to Q2 2023, excluding the social card games portfolio, which we divested in Q3 last year.
Revenue from the advertisement platform grew 28% to EUR 105 million for the quarter, compared to EUR 81 million last year. This was driven by improved direct sales and automated auction platform performance helped. The integration of Hawk towards our single media buying platform, the creation of new strategic and commercial partnerships, improving spend in channels such as audio, CTV, and digital out-of-home, increasing monetization of our exclusive partnerships and owned and operated content.
Excluding contributions from social card games, Q2 2023, total Adjusted EBITDA increased by 22% to EUR 17.5 million in Q2 2024, compared to EUR 14.4 million in Q2 2023. This was due to the improved top-line performance of both platform and premium game segments mentioned previously, cost savings and efficiencies from the integration of previous acquisitions, and the successful launch of Habbo Hotel Origins.
Our total operating expenses are down 13% in Q2 2024 compared to Q2 2023. Of course, again, excluding the social card games portfolio. This is a very significant step down in costs, showing our ability to optimize and integrate our activities into an increasingly cost-effective operation. We continued our focus to build and develop our advertising platform, rolling out new features and improving our technology stack, including the launch of Azerion Edge, a cookieless data monetization solution for publishers.
And we took another important step in executing our strategy to build one of Europe's largest digital advertising platforms through the strategic investment in Eniro Group, which we detailed in last quarter's presentation. I want to highlight a couple of projects that we worked on in Q2 and landed in July.
Our partnership with Captify will help us empower brands in France and Italy by providing them with cookieless audience data from user search behavior outside the walled gardens. Together with our Azerion Edge product for publishers, we are well underway to provide alternative audience solutions to cookies across our entire platform.
We also raised an additional EUR 50 million throughout the successful placement of additional bonds under our existing framework of EUR 300 million. Now, I would like to hand over to Seb for some business and technology highlights.
Yes. Thank you, Umut. Yeah, our teams have worked hard in the last quarter to deliver advertising campaigns, improve our monetization capabilities, and expand our engaged audiences through new partnerships. We hosted our first Azerion annual summit since COVID, bringing over 200 thought leaders together in Venice. We expanded our CTV inventory reach in France through the partnership with Stack, a leading consolidator of television inventories,
And we continue to launch new products and features in our premium game segment with the release, as Umut already said, of Habbo Hotel Origins and My Jackpot Journey, while adding more than 300 new games and 50 publisher partners to our casual games platform. In the last quarter, we continued to develop our digital advertising platform, connecting brands and agencies with audiences across the globe in a brand-safe environment.
For example, we expanded our single media buying interface, adding more and more digital ad formats to allow buying across an increasing amount of publishers and formats from that single interface, making our teams more efficient while providing our advertisers with faster and easier insights. We also launched Azerion Edge, which embeds our first-party data for contextual and behavioral audience targeting through a cookieless solution.
We rolled out dynamic creative optimization, which we are really excited about. This integration brings unique and localized advertising experience to digital audio, making use of generative AI to personalize ads based on the audience's location. And we integrated an AI-based yield management solution for publishers, allowing them to optimally monetize their content.
And one more, an AI-enabled optimization, we launched text-to-speech integration with publisher sites, which allows those publishers to translate articles into audio fragments, and that creates new exclusive inventory in which we then embed digital audio advertisements. As you can see, while we already use machine learning for many years, the use of AI and generative AI is an efficient way to scale up otherwise very labor-intensive and therefore unfeasible tasks, is increasingly part of our delivery to our partners.
Finally, within the content division, we introduced several products that keep our own audiences engaged and active, which in turn, allows us, and the advertising teams to provide those audiences at scale to our clients, the brands. These are a selection of the advancements we made, on our products and the tech stack to, get better performance. With that short summary, I'd like to hand over to Julie, who will take you through our financial highlights.
Thank you, Sebastiaan. Our Q2 group revenue amounts to 139 million EUR, an increase of 24% year on year, excluding social card game portfolio divested in Q3 2023. This was driven by increased direct and automated auction sales and the integration of past acquisition, including Hawk, as a single media buying platform. Excluding social card games in Q2 2023, we have an organic growth of more than 11%.
Adjusted EBITDA for Q2 was 17.5 million EUR, up by 22% compared to Q2 2023 on the same basis. Three key elements here to explain the growth. First, the improved top-line performance of both platform and premium game segments, then the efficiencies from the integration of previous acquisition, and finally, the successful launch of Habbo Hotel Origins. Turning now to our result for the half year.
Our H1 revenue amounts to 258 million EUR, an increase of 21% compared to H1 2023. This was mainly driven by the performance of our platform segments, despite the loss of revenue contribution of the social card games portfolio. Excluding the financial performance of social card games in H1 2023, we have an organic growth of 10%.
Regarding the Adjusted EBITDA, it grew more than 39% year on year on the same basis, and this was mainly driven by four factors: continued improvement of platform advertising revenue in H1, improved sales of AAA games titles in Q2 2024, cost saving and efficiencies from the integration of previous acquisition, and improved premium game segment performance from the successful Habbo Hotel Origins release in Q2 2024. Now, if we move to our segments, let's start with platform.
Our platform segment had a record Q2 with revenue of EUR 125 million in Q2 2024, up by more than 25% year on year. This was driven mainly by increased advertising platform revenue, especially in direct sales, automatic auction sales, integration again of past acquisition, and improved revenue from AAA games, which saw a stronger publisher release schedule compared to the same quarter last year.
Regarding organic growth, platform revenue has achieved 11% for Q2 2024 compared to the previous year. H1 platform revenue grew 24% compared to last year for the same reason stated just now, and H1 organic growth amounts to 10% year on year. Regarding Adjusted EBITDA, it grew to over EUR 14 million in Q2 2024, up by 6% compared to the same quarter last year.
This was mainly driven by increase, again, direct automated auction sales, lower personnel cost due to operational efficiencies program, and platform technology development, resulting in lower operating costs and benefit of scales. All of these three key elements offset in part by lower margin revenue from the Hawk acquisition and AAA game distribution. Excluding some effects of foreign exchange, we had adjusted EBITDA increased by a little over 11% in Q2 2024, year on year.
Regarding H1, adjusted EBITDA for the platform segment amounts to 23 million EUR, an increase of 37%. Now, moving on to non-financial KPIs presented in the second graph. Average digital ads sold per month amount to 12.1 billion in Q2, reflecting an ongoing focus on premium digital advertising formats such as digital out of home, digital audio, interactive store....
The average gross revenue per million processed ad requests was 29 EUR in Q2. As we continue to consolidate advertiser and publisher onto a single media buying platform. Now, let's have even a closer look inside our platform segments. We broadly generate revenue from two sources. First, advertising, which consists of direct sales and automated auction sales, and shown here in the dark blue bars in the chart.
AAA game distribution, previously named e-commerce, in light blue. In Q2, advertising revenue amounts to 104 million EUR, an increase of more than 28% compared to Q2 2023. Two key elements. As direct sales contributed for 70% of platform advertising revenue, compared to 65% in Q2 last year, with the balance provided by automated auction sales.
Then Hawk, our integrated single media buying platform solution for advertisers, contributed 18.5 million EUR in revenue in Q2, also a 28% increase. Now, regarding AAA game distribution, we generated revenue of 20.4 million EUR, compared to 18.3 last year, an increase of 11.5%, thanks to more high-profile AAA game releases that happened in Q2 2024 compared to last year, 2023.
Now, let's move to premium game segments. Please note that the financial performance here exclude contribution of the social casino game portfolio that we sold in August last year. Then total revenue amounts to 14 million EUR in Q2 2024, increase of 15% year on year.
This increase was mainly driven by the increased number of paying users in social casino due to new sales feature, improved performance from metaverse titles due to the release of Habbo Hotel Origins, and offset by the sale of Woozworld at the start of January 2024. In H1 2024, revenue amounted to EUR 25 million, increased a little over 4%.
Now, regarding Adjusted EBITDA, it amounts to EUR 3.4 million in Q2, compared to EUR 1.1 million last year, an increase of more than 200%. Due to product development across the social casino and other metaverse titles, the release of Habbo Hotel Origins, improving metaverse title performance, and the continued consolidation and integration programs.
In H1 2024, adjusted EBITDA was a little more than EUR 4 million, compared to less than EUR 3 million in H1 2023, an increase of close to 56%, sorry, compared to H1 2023, reflecting the previously discussed drivers in Q2 and partly offsetting Q1 2024 by the social casino portfolio shifts in new user generation to mobile, which was higher growth potential over the time, but also higher transaction costs as compared to the web.
Looking now closer to our operational KPIs for premium games in the second graph here, you can see that the average time in game per day remained significantly high at 81 minutes. The average daily active users, in dark blue in the graph, remained over 250,000 in Q2 2024, with the focus on our side on greater engagement with higher-paying users.
Finally, ARPDAU increased by 26% year on year, thanks to the improving game sales mechanics, features, events, as well as the mentioned launch of Habbo Hotel Origins. To conclude on my side, let's have a look on the financial framework. First, we continue to show resilient performance in Q2 and over the last twelve months.
The benefit of the strategies being implemented can be seen in the stability of our Adjusted EBITDA margin for the group, now standing at around 30% for Q2 2024, excluding the contribution of social card game. Secondly, our cash flow from operating activities in Q2 2024 was EUR 6.7 million. And finally, our net interest-bearing debt stood at EUR 165 million as at 30 June. So let me now hand over to Ben to take you through some, sorry, ongoing integration efforts and concluding remarks.
Okay. Thank you, Julie. So during Q2 and into Q3, as we continued integrating and consolidating our past acquisitions, we've maintained our focus on cost optimization and operating efficiencies. Since we began our consolidation and integration in January 2023, we have made the following efforts:
We've reduced the number of legal entities in the group by a total of 48, since the beginning of the period, including eight since April to August of 2024. We've continued to reduce FTEs in Q2 and H1 2024, landing on around 975 FTEs, as at the end of Q2 2024, compared to over 1,500 as at the start of 2023.
As a result, combined with our improved revenue, we've also seen our productivity improve, with revenue per FTE, as you can see in the chart, growing by around 54% as compared to Q2 of 2023. On the operational side, we have continued to simplify our group structure, reducing, as I mentioned, the number of legal entities in the group.
That's a total reduction, therefore, of 50 legal entities as compared to the position in January 2023, and that includes a reduction of 10 legal entities completed between April and early August of this year. In the past 18 months, we've also migrated a total of 9 hosting contracts onto our group arrangements with AWS, and also reduced our office footprint by 24 leases over the same period.
These efforts have continued to reduce our operating expenses in Q2 and H1 2024 as compared to the same periods of last year, with a reduction in FTEs remaining the main driver of that improvement. The recently announced strategic partnerships with Eniro and Captify should also provide the opportunity for additional efficiencies over time.
Reflecting on the periods Q2 and H1 2024 , we're very pleased with the progress that we've made across our platform business, with strong growth in advertising revenue and continued progress in the consolidation and integration of past acquisitions, all reflected in improved adjusted EBITDA.
Our AAA game distribution business has performed consistently well, both this first half year and H1 last year, and excluding the social card games portfolio, our premium games business has shown top-line growth and improved profitability in Q2 2024 , as compared to the same period last year.
We therefore believe that our strategy is delivering, and that we are well-positioned as we head into the important second half of the year. It's in this context that we're pleased to reaffirm our previous guidance.
You can see that set out for you on the right-hand side of the slide, with our full year 2024 revenue expected to be in the range of 540-560 million EUR, and our adjusted EBITDA for the same period expected to be in the range of 75-80 million EUR. In the medium term, we expect annual top-line growth to be around 10%, and our adjusted EBITDA margins to be in the range of 14%-16%.
Overall, an encouraging quarter and first half year, and we believe we have a platform that's well-positioned to continue its growth over the rest of 2024 . With that, thank you for listening, and I'd like to now open the line up for Q&A. Operator, please, can we go ahead and open up the lines for the questions?
We'll now move into our Q&A session. For those of you who are joining us via Zoom, if you'd like to ask a question at this time, please raise your hand by clicking the Raise Hand at the bottom of your Zoom window. Once called upon, please unmute your audio to ask your question.
If you've joined via a phone line, please press star nine. For those of you watching on the webcast page, if you'd like to send a question through, please type it in the Ask a Question tab to the right-hand side of the player. To start, our first question will be from Thomas Singlehurst at Citi. Please unmute your line and ask your question.
Afternoon, it's Tom here. Can you, can you hear me? Hopefully, you can.
Yes, all good, Tom.
Okay, so first question I had was just to sort of come back to the sort of underlying trends, if I can put it that way. I know you've helpfully sort of given us the figures, sort of pro forma for the exclusion of the social card games, but then you've got, I suppose you've still got the Hawk acquisition coming through, which is at least partially captured in acquisition revenue.
I suppose, you know, do you think... I mean, is it fair to characterize that the underlying ad market is improving, and that's a tailwind? Or are you sort of seeing accelerated growth despite, you know, sort of a more challenged, broader macro?
Yeah. Thanks, Tom. That one I'll perhaps hand to Sebastiaan, just to give you that market context.
Yes, Tom, thanks for the question. Sebastian here. I think on the one hand, the advertising market is a result of the wider economy, and, I, I'll not go into a philosophy on what's happening in the world, but at the same time, within the current market, we still see that advertising in general is still becoming more and more digital.
We've been saying this for a few years, so now suddenly you see the outdoor advertising to be almost all of it digital. Connected TV is getting bigger and bigger. So within the current market, for Azerion, there's still a big opportunity to grow in these, let's say, emerging formats within digital. As advertising becomes more and more digital, more and more opportunities also open themselves up for us.
That is, for us, a positive, and then, as we grow through Europe and become significant, we also see that we are ready for any, let's say, economic uptick to be in our favor, and then profitability in the future. Do you want to add something?
I think, Tom, sorry, just one thing perhaps to add to Sebastian's comment there. You know, we've talked about in the past the importance of the Hawk acquisition and the growth that it helps us with, in particular, in some of the formats that Sebastian's mentioned, CTV, audio, digital out-of-home, and so forth. So, you know, I think it's also that exposure to those underlying sort of growth channels and segments that I think also we remain very positive about for the rest of the year.
... I suppose, you know, the follow-on question is, you know, you've a handy sort of one H sort of revenue beat, sort of accelerating profile through the year. At this stage, you've decided to sort of, you know, sort of play it cool on the, on the, the sort of financial guidance side, in the sense that you've reiterated your guidance.
And I know the fourth quarter is seasonally very significant, so it makes perfect sense. But, you know, should we read anything into that in terms of concerns about the broader market? Or is that just recognizing the fact that the fourth quarter is that very big part of the year, and now is not the right time to sort of change the full year guide?
Yeah. Thanks, Tom. Look, I think you've actually correctly answered the question. As you say, the Q4 for our industry and obviously for us as well is a very important part of the year. And noting what Sebastiaan mentioned a little bit earlier, that you know clearly there is a relationship between digital advertising spend and the macroeconomic.
We feel that whilst as you say we've been very pleased with the performance in H1 it is in line with our expectations and therefore fed into our guidance at the start of the year. But given how important that last few months will be at the end of the year we didn't feel that it was right at this stage to change that guidance.
You know, as a management team, we feel very comfortable with the guidance as it stands, but we didn't think it was appropriate at this stage to move it higher, but you know, we're obviously watching those trends that you talked about in your last question very carefully, and we certainly believe that we're well positioned for growth during the rest of the year.
Fair enough. Third question, so I'm doing it one by one. I've got one more after this.
Yeah.
Cookie deprecation, or lack thereof, does that materially change the picture either for this year or running into 2025 ?
Yeah, I'll take that one again, as Sebastiaan here, Tom. Yeah, on the cookies, I think it was the, let's say, the technology of choice for a long time for different systems to be able to talk to each other and exchange information, and the whole advertising needs that data and that exchange.
As long as cookies are there, it is therefore a yeah, long-standing and proven mechanic. But in the last few years, people also realized that there have to be new mechanics at the same time to either cover for a depreciation of the cookie or for environments where cookies are even not viable.
For instance, in Digital Out-of-Home, there's a big, let's say, screen in the center of the city, and the people that are walking past those screens are obviously not leaving cookies behind. So there's a whole trend also that moves away from this specific technology to be used.
So what we did is, at the same time, we embraced, of course, the technology we had in the past, and we have been building many different solutions that allow us to do the same job, basically without cookies. So for us, the moment that this totally gets turned off, or whether it's tapered off, it really shouldn't matter that much, especially not in financial expectations.
Very clear, and then one final question, and I'll jump back in the queue. I mean, you've done a lot of work sort of sorting out the balance sheet, which is obviously very welcome. Can we just talk about, and you know, you obviously focus very hard on operational efficiency and integration.
I'm just wondering whether, you know, we should expect any sort of more M&A spend or whether we should, you know, think about that being at least relative to the group's history, a little bit more on the back burner, and you know, not to anticipate the answer, but if, you know, there is interest, are there particular areas that you're focused on or gaps in capabilities?
Perhaps I'll ask Umut just to start with that one, and I might have a couple of comments at the end.
Yeah, very good question. I mean, our focus on Europe is really delivering results, but we see quite serious opportunities in the coming periods, let's say, we are really working very hard on. And I think it really helps that our platform is as productive and efficiency, so that because that's how M&A is working, and that's how we are building our platform.
If we buy things, we should be able to integrate them because we are an integrated platform, and now we are very far, and you could say finished most of the work. We are now really also looking to the opportunities in Europe, and they are there. Now that's also, yeah, you could say the new role of Ben, Chief Investment Officer, working very hard. Maybe it can be a little bit more concrete or-
Yes, I mean, so look, I think that definitely sets the context, Tom, and but what I think you have seen over the last few months is us using a number of different partner structures. So we touched on, during the main presentation, the strategic partnership with Eniro.
And, you know, that's a good example of taking a minority stake, working very closely with the management team at Eniro, servicing their SME client base with an enhanced advertising product, and also helping the company as a whole with their technology strategy, which we're able to really, really help drive because of the integration that Umut's just touched on. So I would certainly expect us to be looking at more of those types of opportunities. We also have the Captify partnership, where we work very well with Captify generally.
And there was an opportunity to work very closely with their teams and bring them into, as it were, the Azerion operation in France and Italy. So again, not sort of full-scale M&A, but a really, I think, very sympathetic partnership where their teams came across to us.
And so I think for the rest of the year and into 2025, we really do see that range of opportunity that we've talked about before. Enterprise deals, it's good, which are good commercial partnerships, but at some scale. Sometimes we'll support those with minority interests, and we really do see opportunities in that space.
And then at the other end of the spectrum, in a market which is growing and evolving very quickly, we do continue to see, as I mentioned, a really quite interesting sort of more wholesale M&A opportunities, and we'll be very disciplined on how we go after those. But you know, we are nevertheless sort of very very interested in some of the opportunities that they present.
That's very clear. Thank you very much.
That's great, and thanks, as for your questions, Tom. Okay, operator, could we move on to the next questioner, please?
Next question is from Wim Gille at ABN AMRO. Please unmute your line and ask your question.
Can you hear me?
Yeah. Hi, Wim. Thanks for joining.
Yeah, yeah, hi there. I got a couple of questions. I think if we look at the first half, we had proper good development in the underlying results, yet the, let's say, one-offs were a bit higher than anticipated. Now, in the past, you spoke about how your restructuring efforts are coming to an end, which is also visible.
But can you also give us a bit of feeling on how to look at the acquisition-related spend in the adjustments? Whether we should see that taper off for the rest of the year. And then moving to the cash flow. In the first half of 2024, I think there was a cash out of about EUR 20 million, or in that that increased about EUR 20 million.
It was about EUR 7 million for Q2, if I did the math correct. And yeah, obviously, we need to start generating cash along the way. Now, I know, given the seasonality, that Q4 is typically a big quarter. And I also know that we have 20, sorry, 12 million, hopefully coming through from the escrow accounts in for the Social Casino games.
But how would you look at cash flows in the second half of this year to bring that net debt number down again from the current levels? The third question, the last question that I have is, I looked at the country split that you provided on page 20 of the report.
I noticed a significant drop in your revenues in United Arab Emirates from about EUR 25 million last year to EUR 5 million this year. I was just wondering, whereas all the other countries are growing, well, Ireland is down a little bit, but there's a significant drop in United Arab Emirates. Is that like a reallocation from an accounting perspective of the revenues, or is something happening in that region?
Okay, Wim, thank you very much. We'll take those questions each in order. I'll pick up the first one. I think Julie is gonna pick up the cash flow question, and I'll come back on the country split. The first question was, you know, broadly, how do we see the outlook on acquisition expenses, and in your question, you correctly summarized sort of the other part of the answer to that question, which is, you know, restructuring.
We obviously have been talking about for a little while, and as you rightly say, we saw a reduction in that restructuring cost in Q2, sort of signaling from the original program that we're basically done.
We will keep that obviously under review for the rest of the year, because we obviously have to just keep assessing where there are efficiency opportunities. But, as things currently stand, in a similar way on acquisition expenses, that really relates to obviously the acquisitions themselves and then the ongoing integration.
That again is slightly lagging the restructuring components, 'cause we have to close down systems or integrate systems or migrate contracts. There's a slightly longer duration of that. But to your point, if we weren't to do any further M&A activity or sort of substantive partner activity, you would expect that number to be reducing over the course of the second half of this year and obviously into next year.
And then the only swing factor on that, coming back slightly to Tom's question, is if we end up doing more activity with partners, be it M&A or something just short of that, you may well then see an uptick in that number. But obviously, you'll see the event alongside it, so you'll know roughly what to expect at this stage.
So that's the answer to the first question. Your second question was on cash flow and how we sort of think about conceptually cash flow for the rest of the year, and you already partly noted the sort of importance of Q4. So I'll just hand that over to Julie.
Yeah. Thank you, Wim. Yeah, regarding the cash flow, so what we can see in the Q2, the net increase in the cash and cash equivalent is EUR 2 million, but as you mentioned, for the H1 is a negative EUR 49 million. It's mainly explained by the EUR 6.5 million that we invest and also the one-off settlement that we had.
But should tell it through, the main, let's say, cash flow and our activity are coming from the last months of the year. So we expect an increase in our cash generation. But perhaps also just to mention that in the Q2, the net cash provided by the operating activity is positive by EUR 6.7 million.
And regarding your last question on the escrow regarding the sales of Youda. You're right, so this should come into Azerion during the next days. We have not been aware of any issue, potential issue, but this is something that is just processing as of today. Yeah.
Thank you, Julie. And then on the third question, which related to the country split, and thank you for spending the time to go into the detail. Yes, so that relates to effectively flows within the e-commerce now called AAA Game Distribution.
You can generally have sort of large partner contracts there, and obviously sometimes it's tied to the nature of the game release as well. And it happens that in particular, there's been lower activity in the UAE and actually higher activity in Germany. So some of that Germany uptick that you can see, as compared to the same period last year, is both in premium games and also in some of the AAA Game Distribution activities.
And obviously, just given the nature of the flows there, that can move around a little bit. But, as I say, the big picture coming back to how AAA Game Distribution has performed, we've been really pleased, 'cause last year actually it performed very well. And at the moment, H1 to H1, it's right up alongside itself. So although there's been a change in the geographic mix, the overarching performance is actually very similar to what was already a good period last year.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Wim.
There are no further available questions at this time. I'll now hand over to Ben Davey for written questions.
Thank you very much. So, we have been receiving, and thank you for these, some written questions as well, which we'll always, try and address one way or another through the course of the presentation. And so if I, turn to the first one that I can see in front of us.
The first question, which I think comes from one of the sort of market commentators, so thank you for that. "I see that the platform's turnover has increased by 25%, but the EBITDA result, only increased by 6%. Please, can you explain the difference?" So perhaps, Julie, would you like to take that one?
Yeah. Thank you. So, yes, as mentioned, as you mentioned, by the increase by 25%, we are very pleased with the platform top line growth. As mentioned earlier, the Adjusted EBITDA growth in Q2 2024 was influenced by the business mix. So strong revenue growth in lower margin areas, including Hawk and AAA game distribution. And we had specific to Q2 2024, an effect on the foreign exchange. If we exclude this foreign exchange impact, platform Adjusted EBITDA growth was 11% compared to last year.
Okay. Thank you, Julie. The next question that's come in, "Despite the increase in the EBITDA result, the operational loss and net loss have increased in the second quarter. Please, could you explain the movements?" So thank you for that. I think it's ... I'll take that one. I think it's important to put that in context.
The operating loss was 1 million EUR higher in Q2 2024, but actually 1 million EUR lower for the whole of H1 2024 as compared to H1 2023. So I think that's important context. For Q2, the operating loss movement was mainly driven by the one-off settlement referred to earlier in the discussion.
And if you, as you can see from that press release, if you exclude the one-off settlement, the operating loss for Q2 would have been, in, approximately 0.9 million EUR. In other words, it would have been a reduction in operating loss of about 2 million, as compared to Q2 of 2023.
In addition, the results in this quarter are also impacted by an adverse FX movement, that again, Julie previously discussed. Just turning to the second part of the question, which is on net loss, i.e., the bottom of the P&L. The results for the period at that level were also impacted by an increase in interest costs.
Now, while the market interest rates have remained relatively elevated for a while now, currently, the market analysts do expect cuts in interest rates in Europe and the U.S. before the end of the year, which, if that were to happen, would obviously help reduce our interest costs. So it's something that we keep a close eye on, but that hopefully explains for you the differences in the positions.
Okay, so moving on to the next question: "Why does Azerion place a strong emphasis on the Adjusted EBITDA result, but pay less attention to the development of the operational and net loss?" So thank you for that question. Julie, perhaps you'd like to pick that one up.
Yeah. So on our side, it's important to manage the whole P&L, and so clearly attention is paid to all parts of the P&L. At the same time, part of the judgment is when to invest in the growth of the business, which may not translate into net profit in the short term, so it may even sometimes increase net losses for a period of time.
So Azerion is a growth technology company in fast-moving and innovative digital advertising market, and we have seen attractive opportunities, as mentioned, Umut, to continue that growth. So for the time being, we've been investing in that growth, while at the same time simplifying, consolidating, and integrating our business to reduce the cost, as you saw. We believe that progress is currently best tracked and reflected in Adjusted EBITDA, but yes, we'll consider additional performance measures over time.
... That's great. Thank you, Julie. On to the next question. The price of Azerion shares has moved and certainly went down early this morning. Obviously, it's moving a lot during the course of today. Compared to a year ago, the price is also more than 40% lower.
How does the board assess the discrepancy between the financial performance and the appreciation of investors? So perhaps I'll take that one. Look, obviously, as a management team, we cannot comment specifically on our own share price. But what we can do is to commit to delivering as strong a performance as we possibly can, quarter after quarter.
In addition, I think what we can do is continue to resolve and clear and simplify as much as possible our legacy structure, the litigation, and indeed, other historic investor concerns. So a good example from last year was, of course, the refinancing of our bond at the time. And addressing those investor concerns and cleaning up the legacy and simplifying the structure, I think is another very important part of our strategy.
And then the final piece is to just spend more time with investors, commentators, such as yourselves and analysts, explaining our business model, and ultimately, why we believe we're well-positioned to take advantage of the market opportunities that we see in front of us.
So in that context, we believe we've delivered another strong quarter and half year of results, and we very much look forward to engaging with the market and all of you after the presentation today, with any follow-up questions and thoughts that you have. And then there's another question. Is there anything else to report about the AFM investigation?
Is that investigation still ongoing? So just to confirm, there is nothing more to report on the AFM investigation at this stage. But obviously we would provide any update if there were any material developments. We have another question. Thank you for that. Can you please explain in a little bit more detail what Azerion Edge is?
Yes, I can. So Azerion Edge is a product that a publisher installs on their website, basically, and that starts to build audience information out of the behavior of people that are on the website at that moment. So people are searching for something, and they're clicking on certain articles. That builds a profile on behalf of the publisher, which is then used by our auction system to broadcast a certain audience type to the potential buyers.
So we're not using cookies there, but we are helping the publishers to provide potential advertisers with a more detailed view on what type of person is actually visiting that website at that moment. And of course, the more information on that particular audience, the easier it becomes for the advertiser to decide whether or not to place an ad there. It's all about collecting audience information without the use of cookies.
That's great. Thank you, Seb, and I think there's probably just looking. There's just one final question I think probably is for you as well. What is the impact of artificial intelligence on digital advertising, and how is Azerion positioned to capture these benefits?
Yeah, absolutely. I think it's now the artificial intelligence is, of course, the buzzword, but for years we've been talking about machine learning and machine intelligence here, and that's because in our environment we need to process such a vast amount of data that simply doing it with people is unfeasible.
So if you think about our auction system, that auction system needs to run an auction to allow everybody in the world to decide whether or not to place an ad at a specific time on a website or in an app. There's hundreds of thousands of people or companies and advertisers joining that auction to make that decision. All kinds of data are inserted there to make that decision happen.
It needs to happen in about a millisecond, and we do, on average, more than 250,000 of those auctions every second of the day. So that's such an astronomical amount that you need machines to help you. So we've been, for years, using machine learning and intelligence. Now, in the new times, artificial intelligence is more about the generative AI as people see it.
So what we are now implementing, and I think I mentioned a few of the examples earlier in the presentation. So what we're now doing is using the generative AI to add, let's say the capabilities, where normally we would have to have a lot of people, but now we can use the AI to actually substitute them.
As an example, the audio AI that we created was the following: Imagine you have a supermarket in France, and you are in hundreds of cities. Now, you might wanna show an ad or let people listen to an ad in Spotify saying, "Yeah, you need to come to the closest Carrefour," which is at a certain address.
Now, in the old days, we would have to record with a person and thousands of ads with people saying, "Yeah, please come to something in France," and it has to be done over and over again, manually.
And now, with the generative AI, we can have the base of the ad come to Carrefour, and we have the AI then add all of the local addresses in the local language, in the same speech added to the advertising, and then placing it close to where the people are, makes a much bigger impact than if you just do a generic ad.
So artificial intelligence for us really plays into where we see the opportunity of making the ads and the experience for the user even more personalized, but where it was previously unfeasible to do it with people because it would just take too much time. But we're investing heavily in it, and you can see in the presentation already, I mentioned three or four things where the AI is really helping us to become more effective and efficient.
Yeah, that's great, Sebastiaan. Thank you very much for that. And look, I think just, just generally, we, we see real opportunity here. We, we've obviously got a long history of working in the fields of, in particular, advanced machine learning and, we see very much the benefits of artificial intelligence as a, as an ongoing theme.
That is the final question. So, thank you very much, as ever, for everyone, joining today. Very much appreciate your time and engagement. Very much look forward to following up with anyone, who has further questions or would like a meeting, and, please do get in touch. Otherwise, have a very good rest of the day.